According to a study released on Monday, the number of illegal immigrants has grown by 2.5 million under President Barack Obama.

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) reports that as large as that number may seem, it is actually fewer than the total number of illegals who entered the country while George W. Bush was president.

The Washington Times points out, however, that “nearly 800,000 of those illegal immigrants arrived in the past two years, suggesting that the flow has ticked up as the economy has improved and as Mr. Obama has reshaped enforcement policies, focusing on criminals while relaxing actions against rank-and-file illegal immigrants.”

Testifying before the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security in April, CIS policy analyst Jon Freere noted that “one out of 10 births in the U.S. is to an illegal immigrant mother.”

An average of about 400,000 new illegals come into the United States per year. During the Bush administration, between 500,000 and 600,000 illegals entered per year.

Despite the influx, the study finds that the illegal immigrant population in the United States has stayed fairly steady since 2009, between 11 and 12 million. The reason the population has stayed about the same is because new arrivals were offset by those who returned to their home countries, those who received green cards, and those lost due to natural mortality, according to CIS.

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“Saying this huge problem is not a problem because the overall population isn’t getting bigger is like an obese person saying he doesn’t have a problem because he’s not getting any fatter,” said the study’s author, Steven A. Camarota. “If we had just not let new illegals settle in the country, we would have reduced the population by 25 or 30 percent since 2009. That’s what these numbers imply.”